Vegas Weekend 2018: Post-Event Thoughts

Published: Categories: Recaps, Advice Estimated Reading Time: ~5 minutes

Now that the weekend is over, I am happy to announce that it was a success!

Five guys showed up over the course of the weekend (never more than 3 in the room at any time). It was much smaller than I had hoped but it was still awesome. I have plenty of fond memories and a lot to look forward to next time!

I have a ton of disconnected thoughts that I’m going to write down so that I don’t forget them. Most of them will be useful for planning future events.

Thoughts

  • Asking people to come for a 36-hour party is unrealistic.  People can’t take that much time out of their schedule.

  • None of the snacks or drinks got used (and most of it got thrown away).  Guys didn’t come to eat, they came to cum.  Water and Gatorade was useful but hotel water would have been fine.

  • The fancy room was a waste.  A small room with 2 beds would have been sufficient.  

  • The hotel wanted $650/day to rent extra TVs (obviously they’re used to only corporate people needing A/V support, and they’ll pay anything).  You aren’t paying for the TV, you’re paying for the labor and the fact that if it doesn’t work you have someone on call to fix it immediately.

  • Google Chrome Stick doesn’t work in hotels because of the splash screen.  You need to bring one laptop for each screen.  ChromeBooks work really well for this.

  • I thought a 2-day party would mean more people could attend. In reality it meant less people would show up.  I suspect that if the party was Saturday from noon to 5pm, everyone would modify their schedules to be able to attend. Because they had a 2-day target, it gave everyone 2 days to procrastinate; then it was too late to attend.

  • A lot of guys expressed that they cancelled because they were nervous about being “naked with a group of dudes”.  Others didn’t show up when they heard it was “just me in the room”.  In the future I’ll emphasize that people don’t have to get naked.

  • Interestingly enough… when the RSVP count was zero, nobody wanted to RSVP.  Nobody wanted to be the first to RSVP yes.  Maybe I should prime the pump (so to speak) by having 2 hosts, so that nobody feels like their the first.

  • Over 100 people asked about the party that had no intention of showing up. They just were wondering if this was all real. After the first party report, people were shocked that the party had actually been real. This is a theme in my life: I often volunteer to do things and later get a comment like, “wow, when you agreed to do it, we didn’t expect it to happen.”  People, listen… I make shit happen. It’s my thing.

  • Swinger groups say that 80% of first timers that RSVP don’t show up.  That was about right.  2 people that showed up were first-timers, out of 10 that said they’d be there.  The other 2 guys had experience with this kind of thing and they did show up.

What would I do differently

  • A single-day event.  Maybe just noon-5pm.  If things run longer, that’s fine.

  • A small room (1 or 2 beds) at a fancy hotel. Don’t waste money on a big room or anything fancy.

  • One laptop per screen.  Get volunteers to bring TVs, don’t rent from the hotel. Ideally there would be 3 screens total.

  • Give people a reason to commit.  For example, I think I should have gotten 2 co-hosts to commit to being there, so nobody feels like they’d be RSVPing to an empty party. Having a cohost would be useful because I’d have someone to get feedback and share work of promoting the event.

  • Alternatively I should have had an earlier deadline. For example, I should have said that the party will be cancelled if I don’t have 3 committed attendees 1 month prior to the event. That would create an inventive for people to get real about travel plans, etc.

Lastly…

Lastly, I want to encourage YOU to host your own parties.  After the first party report I got a lot of messages saying “Let me know if you host a party in my city!”  Dude…. I’m not going city to city hosting parties like a perverted johnny appleseed.  Host your own party.  You can do it!  Do it with 1 other bud, it doesn’t have to be a 50-person extravaganza.  Or, ask your buds that like porn if they want to do it.  (do any of your buds NOT like porn?)

Would I do this again?  Maybe.  There’s the Edison New Jersey event on Saturday, Nov 3, 2018 (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GLvc1s7O5YdWhbJV_7MScKuJ1CtiFo8QNtZUkSiEz1k/edit ).  That will be much more simple, and just 3 hours (with a visit to Exxxotica Expo a few hours before and a few hours after).

Related Posts: